Today I found a new article on implementing a Bomberman clone using an Entity System (in C#) – but I feel it doesn’t quite work.
It’s a well-written article, with some great illustrations. But the authors “Components” struck me as over-complicated and too behaviour-focussed. If you’re designing a game based on an ES, this isn’t a great way to do it – it feels too much towards old-style OOP gameobjects.
This is an opportunity to talk about good and bad directions in Component design. I really like the author’s idea of using Bomberman as a reference – it’s simple, it’s a well-known game, but it’s got a lot of depth. Read the original article to refresh your memory on Bomberman and how it works. Then come back here, and we’ll do a worked example on choosing components for a game. I’ll completely ignore the programming issues, and only look at the design issues.